The MHC Blog

Powerful Business Insights for Succesful Leaders

It’s been an interesting year in the life of politics. Anyone following the US or UK political scene may agree with me, it sometimes feels like your watching a comedy programme, never has the political section of the evening news held my attention so closely – I ask myself daily “I wonder what have they been up to today?!”

My interest was held very closely with the recent 2 interviews with Diane Abbot. You don’t need to know which UK party she is representing (Labour), or her job title (Shadow Home Secretary), just that during a key election time where she is being interviewed nonstop to convince the public of the credibility of her party, she wasn’t able to have an accurate discussion on key numbers.

It’s a fact: Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 – 1964) are retiring at a greater rate than ever. Many, like myself, had to delay their departure from corporate life due to the recent recession but are now making up for lost time by finding alternative ways to make up their retirement pot deficit to live the life they have dreamed of for years.

They are doing this by creating lifestyle businesses of their own, increasingly online, where they can utilise the actual technology that was one of the reasons for their decline in face to face communication and hence engagement within company cultures over the past 20 years.

Anyone running their own business, regardless of Company size or how long you have been in business, will know the immense pressure they feel to keep business flowing in, finding new leads and seeking out others that can help recommend their services.

Running your own business often comes with hidden expenses that add to the pressure – the pressure increases tenfold when you have the responsibility of employees. Add to this that its tough business world out there now, it’s no wonder you can let things get slightly out of kilter.

Panic can creep in and you forget everything you have learnt about finding and getting new business. Networking in the region is a huge business development opportunity that you must leverage from. It takes time, it hardly ever brings immediate closed business, but works when you give the right amount of time and effort.

Here are my 3 tips to remember when networking either in a group or one to one:

When working with SMEs run by a passionate entrepreneur, I often hear the business owner refer to the A Players they want on their team to needing to be Rock Stars! They want, and quite rightly so, A Players that are the best around, superstars of the future that will work hard to help grow the business. The Rock Stars need to be able to turn their hands to many things, be flexible to work across roles and give their all in to help the Company “break the industry!”.

Wow, inspirational stuff! And they are right, in order to grow quickly, the team you hire need to be a passionate bunch of people, driven the same way the entrepreneurial owner is, willing to go the extra mile …. I think you get the message.

We have all been there, someone on your team that isn’t really cutting it, but you keep putting off the job of dealing with it and ultimately asking them to leave. There are many reasons why you do this:

They are a nice person

They have family relying on them

They have been with the Company since day one

It’s not their fault that the role has changed and now it’s out grown them

All of these are fabulous excuses and allow you to sleep at night putting off the inevitable. However, what is the real cost of delaying the conversation? Here are 3 points to take into consideration: